Before the Detroit Pistons took on the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night, Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff talked about the team's dedication to playing "Pistons basketball." Then, seated in the same folding chair only a few hours later, after the Pistons fell to the Knicks 111-97, Bickerstaff wondered if the NBA was unfairly penalizing the Pistons for being who they are.
"It is extremely frustrating. To see it happen the way that it happens. There is a discrepancy," Bickerstaff said, about the way his team is officiated. "There's a physicality that we play with and play with every night, and the League should be accustomed to it by now. We've been doing it for three years, and it's not going to change."
That physicality is part of what Bickerstaff referred to pre-game as "Pistons basketball." Since being hired by the team in the summer of 2024, Bickerstaff and his staff have created an identity that is not only tied to physicality but also defensive pressure, contested shots at the rim, and turnovers. Before Bickerstaff took over the Pistons, they had a defensive rating of 118 in 2023-24. That was 25th in the league. In his first season at the helm, the Pistons had a rating of 112.5, which was good for 10th-best, and last season, they had a defensive rating of 108.9, second-best. Last season, they also averaged 10.4 steals and 6.4 blocks per game, both of which were best in the league. The season before Bickerstaff arrived, the Pistons were dead last in the NBA with 6.5 steals per game and were 20th in the league with 4.7 blocks per game.
While some of that improvement can be tied to personnel, many of the key players on the Pistons were in Detroit before Bickerstaff arrived. Cade Cunningham played three seasons in Detroit before Bickerstaff was hired, but he had never made an All-Star Game and had only averaged a steal per game in one of those seasons. Jalen Duren played two seasons in Detroit prior to Bickerstaff being hired, and Ausar Thompson played one. Their evolution as players can be attributed to increased experience and maturity, but it would be foolish not to give some credit to the identity created in Detroit over the last two seasons.
“We play Pistons basketball. It doesn't matter who our opponent is or what the rest of the league is doing," explained Bickerstaff. "We're built a certain way, and if we're trying to change because of what everybody else is doing, we're not going to be as good at it, and we're not going to be as true to ourselves. That's the most important thing. All the changes that have happened [in the Eastern Conference], your identity matters, right? Your style of play is second to your identity, and if you're playing true to your identity every single night, that gives you an advantage when you're playing against teams that are trying to figure out who they are or what they do. So our aim is just to be who we are, right? We play Pistons ball every single night.”
Having that built-in identity has also made it easier for new players to adapt to what the Pistons are doing. Guys like Paul Reed, Duncan Robinson, John Collins, and Isaiah Joe can become integrated into the team quickly because the identity is so clear-cut.
"I think the way the league is going to be is you're going to have some overhaul with a lot of teams just because of the new salary structure and all that stuff," said Bickerstaff. "I think the more simple you can make it, the more quickly you can get guys to buy into it, and the more you get to maintain your identity by seeking new players that kind of fit, and I think that's what we've been able to do. Give the front office a ton of credit; they found guys that fit our identity and the way that we play."
The way the Pistons play has worked too.
Last season, they finished the regular season 60-22 and were the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The season before, they were 44-38 and finished as the 6th seed. That was after a season in which they were 14-68 and were the worst team in the Eastern Conference. It was a pretty quick rise to title contention, and much of that has to do with style of play.
Yet, "Pistons basketball" also does come with some negatives.
Since Bickerstaff took over and instilled his more physical brand of basketball, the Pistons have been among the leaders in the NBA in fouls. In his first season, they committed 20.7 fouls per game, the fourth-most in the league. Last season, they led the league with 22 fouls per game. Now, the Pistons also had the third-most fouls per game the season before Bickerstaff was hired, so this is not strictly an issue tied to his style of play, but it is something he has embraced as a head coach.
"We're physical within the rules and have gotten really good at it," he declared after the loss to the Knicks. "We've been one of the top defenses over the past two, three years, whatever it's been. We play a certain style, and fans want to see the style that we play. That's what Detroit wants, and that's what our fan base enjoys about this team, so we'll continue to do what we do."
The issue the Pistons will need to reconcile with is that their approach may make it harder to reach their ultimate goal of an NBA title.
While the league has continued to assert that games are not called differently in the regular season and the playoffs, recent data has shown that games are officiated much tighter in the postseason. Last season, referees called 11% more fouls per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. While that was one of the largest gaps in league history, and only the sixth time in 60 years that the foul gap between regular season and playoffs topped 10%, the NBA has had an increase in foul calls from the regular season to the playoffs 66 times in its 80-year history. The 2025 season saw the biggest gap between regular-season and playoff fouls in over a decade, and 2026 increased that gap.
It's also not a gap that the league is running from.
In that ESPN article linked above, NBA senior vice president of referee development and training Monty McCutchen said, "It would be very difficult on our players, on our coaches, most certainly on our referees, if the intensity of a seven-game series that we see in the playoffs exhibited itself over 82 games. "NBA playoff basketball is one of the great spectacles of all sports in my opinion. You get the combination of the passion and strength of our players and coaching staffs in tight spaces over a seven-game series. And I think that that absolutely makes for a different game."
Even though the NBA acknowledges that playoff basketball is inherently more physical, it seems likely to still use the whistle more often in the postseason. That was one bugaboo for the Pistons last season. While they allowed 27.2 free throws per game to their opponents in the regular season, they allowed 29.2 per game in the postseason. Cleveland averaged 30 free throws per game in their victory over the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Those may seem like minor disparities, but every point matters in the postseason, especially since the pace is slower, which means fewer offensive possessions and shot attempts per game.
The bigger issue at play may be that Detroit's edge in physicality, which helps so much in the regular season, becomes less pronounced in the playoffs. Playoff games are slower and more physical by nature. Most of the teams that make the playoffs are strong defensive teams. Scoring overall in last year's playoffs fell, with teams averaging about 117.8 points in the regular season and just 105 points in the postseason.
Sportico’s 2025 study of NBA Playoff basketball suggested that the slower pace and stingier defense in the playoffs make it "more difficult for teams to generate open shots close to the basket." As a result, "paint touches have consistently declined in the postseason throughout the player tracking era since 2014." That means offenses have to settle for more three-pointers, but three-point percentage decreases in the postseason: "Of the 224 playoff squads since 2010, excluding those in the 2020 playoff bubble, nearly three-quarters (72%) shot worse from behind the 3-point line during the postseason than the regular season." That means teams that take more three-pointers give themselves more opportunity to overcome the worse shooting.
The Sportico report also mentioned that the more aggressive postseason defense "limits transition opportunities and shots around the basket while forcing teams out of their offensive sets." That's detrimental to a Pistons team that creates so much offense through their defense creating transition opportunities. Last season, they were 1st in turnovers forced, 2nd in fast break points per game, and 2nd in points in the paint per game in the regular season. However, their offense really struggled in the paint against the interior defense of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley in that loss to the Cavaliers.
So even if the physical nature of the Pistons' defense hasn't been detrimental to their playoff success in the past two years, their physical, transition-oriented offense has made it harder for them to score points in the postseason. In order for them to make a deep run in the playoffs, they will need to modify a little bit of what "Pistons basketball" means on the offensive end.
So far, through four games of the 2026-27 NBA season, we are seeing them start to make a few of those changes. While the offensive rebounding and strong interior offense have remained, the Pistons appear to be playing a little bit faster and spacing the court better than they did last season.
Last year, they were 17th in the NBA in three-point shooting at 35.6% on 30.9 attempts per game, and 28% of their points came on threes, which was 29th in the NBA. This season, Detroit is 9th in the NBA in three-point shooting at 37.6% on 37.3 attempts per game, and 37.2% of Detroit’s points have come off threes, which is 10th-most in the NBA. That's a major difference.
This season, the threes the Pistons are getting are also based mostly on pace and ball movement. Through four games, 29 of the Pistons’ 37.3 three-point attempts per game are on catch-and-shoot chances. That’s the 9th most in the league, and they have a 56.2% effective field goal rate on those attempts, which is 11th-best in the NBA. Last season, just 22.5 of their 31 attempts per game were on catch-and-shoot threes, 26th-most in the league.
A big part of that increase has been Coach Bickerstaff changing how he uses sharpshooter Duncan Robinson, using him more as an on-ball screener to free him up to get open looks when defenders help on the screen. Using Duncan as a screener “just puts defenses in tough decisions,” explained Bickerstaff. “Especially when you get him in some of those rip screens for John [Collins], who has the lob threat ability. Do you want to switch a smaller guy onto him? Do you have to bump him? Then Duncan's so intelligent. He does a great job of reading those screens and what the defenders do, and he's a step ahead of them. He knows when to slip out, he knows when to set it, he knows what route to take to get to the next screen quicker. So all those things just make it easier for him to create those opportunities and put defenses in tough situations.”
Collins himself is also a 37% shooter from deep in his career, and Isaiah Joe, who was acquired from the Thunder this offseason, has shot 40.5% from beyond the arc in his seven seasons. All of that seems to be an acknowledgement that, offensively, "Pistons basketball" needs to adapt. The physicality and aggression can remain, but when teams rise up to meet that level of play in the postseason, Detroit needs to have another wrinkle to throw at teams if they want to reach the ultimate prize.
We're only four games into the new season, but this version of "Pistons basketball" may just be the most playoff-friendly version we've seen in years.
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